


The Duality of Man & Goat

by Nebulad



Series: Bold & Golden [2]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Other, Post-Plague, Repressed Memories, snapshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 07:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12601484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: She didn’t have to wait long, at the very least. She’d barely finished setting up the candles that she assumed she’d need to speak with a spirit when she felt him ghost flame up her back. Resisting the urge to shout in surprise, she whipped around and saw… nothing. “Lucio?” she demanded without thinking, urgently backing herself up against the wall.“You’re back,”he whispered against her collar.“You knew I would be,” she said before he could point it out.





	The Duality of Man & Goat

The Count’s Wing was quiet and still, like it’d been the last time she was there. _This,_ Ana reminded herself firmly as she was nearly overtaken by the urge to flee, _is exactly why you need to be here. This is where your answers are._ No teasing them out of Asra; no hitting brick walls with Nadia; no dancing around details with Julian. _Who knows best what happened here than Count Lucio?_

She wanted to avoid his chambers, though— you could only bathe a corpse off of you so many times before you started trying to circumvent the entire process. He would come, she thought. She had no reason to believe that he wouldn’t, unless… maybe he couldn’t? Ghosts weren’t exactly her area of expertise, but it was possible that the power that kept the Count bound wasn’t flawless. He wasn’t _confined_ to his room, but maybe for ideal results…

No, she’d made up her mind. Sitting amidst the dust would be a last resort; if he needed her to move then certainly he would bid her to. She knew the Count to be no other way—

… well, not that she _knew_ him. From what she’d _heard…_ very little, all things considered, as most of the years surrounding his death were shrouded in throbbing darkness… well, she got the impression from _somewhere,_ anyway, that the Count was clever enough to get what he wanted.

She didn’t have to wait long, at the very least. She’d barely finished setting up the candles that she assumed she’d need to speak with a spirit when she felt him ghost flame up her back. Resisting the urge to shout in surprise, she whipped around and saw… nothing. “Lucio?” she demanded without thinking, urgently backing herself up against the wall.

“ _You’re back,”_ he whispered against her collar.

“You knew I would be,” she said before he could point it out. It felt uncomfortably like she was responding from her gut rather than… actually thinking about what she was saying. Something inside her was talking to him without needing her input. “Why are you here?”

“ _I live here.”_ He sounded annoyed but it was impossible to tell without being able to focus on his face. She could see flashes of him, the shadow lingering and looming.

“It’s your wing,” she agreed.

“ _You don’t know_ anything.” The room got darker and hotter, and Lucio solidified long enough for her to see—

She clenched her eyes shut and waited. He had horns and fur and was missing an arm and looked half-mangy. She could feel his hot breath against her face and just waited. Waited. Waited. “What don’t I know?” she tried finally, feeling the words punch their way out of her ribs.

“ _Anything, didn’t you_ hear _me?”_ he snapped.

“What do you want me to know?”

“ _Me. Me. Me. Me.”_

She frowned, eyes still shut. “I remember you. You were the Count.” How did she explain to a goat demon— not a spirit, thank you very much, past-Ana— that two years of her life were just… gone? It felt a lot like over sharing, and not in the regular embarrassing way but rather in the way where she would be self-consciously cluing this monster into the most delicate part of her history.

“ _You don’t remember me,”_ he insisted furiously, his voice silent at the same time that it made her bones shakes. _“No one does. No one bothers to remember me.”_

“I _do,”_ she insisted furiously from that same spot in her stomach that she didn’t recognise. Her eyes flew open just as the air around her got hotter and angrier, and the wind of invisible flames licked at her calves and scalded her hands. She felt like what she said was true— part of her knew him. Part of her saw him, and for a second his goat-like visage trembled and she could see him scowling furiously in that insufferably handsome way he always had, glaring at her with his bloodied eyes that she’d never gotten used to—

— _god her head—_

She fell to her knees to grab it, gasping in pain. What had Asra said about her headaches? She had to get away from what was causing it, even if it was him. This one though, it was… bad. She couldn’t move. She had to clear her head but she couldn’t focus, not with all the fire—

And just like that, it stopped. Everything stopped. The air thinned out to a comfortable, breathable level, the heat subsided, and she felt Lucio’s presence soften. _“What happened?”_ he asked, still close to her. She took several fish-like gasps of air, shivering like snuffed candle smoke. _“Ana? I didn’t mean to upset you that badly.”_

“It wasn’t you,” she murmured, cringing when the pain flared again. The realisation felt momentous— it wasn’t him, it wasn’t the Count. He was here now, kneeling and uncertain and ready to fight off whatever invisible pain she pointed him at— but the goat demon? That was something else: a leech.

His hand reached out for her— she could see it in her mind’s eye, moving towards her hair— but before he could touch her, he was thrown back by some invisible force. He writhed painfully and she groggily made an attempt to open her eyes and actually _see,_ to try and stop whatever was… doing it. Everything was tilted and doubled, like she’d been shaken hard and thrown to the ground.

The goat was back, tall and looming and vicious. Its face contorted and it jerked awkwardly as it fought itself— but the beast won. _“You know nothing,”_ he hissed, in Lucio’s voice. He sounded miserable and angry, lurching like he was having trouble controlling itself. _“I’ve been here for three years and no one remembers. They will, though. They will.”_

And with that, Ana was alone.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing blog is here, and ](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com)[the game I'm working on is here](https://nebulous.itch.io/manor-hill).
> 
> At this point I'm subscribing to an Ice King Lucio theory, ie "This magic keeps me alive, but it's making me crazy". I mean not that Lucio isn't kind of a shithead anyway, but I wanna say that something is feeding on him, yk? Like amplifying his shitty attitude to resemble some sort of evil. It's only the romantic in me that wants me to believe that warm fuzzies for the apprentice would clear his head. The real magic is love, etc etc.
> 
> Anyway I know this isn't particularly coherent or impressive but I haven't had a lot of time to settle down and write something that is and it makes me antsy to go too long without putting something out.


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